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As a company that believes quite strongly on using social media, we encourage our clients to embrace it too. Since most of them are B2B, this has been an uphill battle but, slowly but surely, they are all coming around. We also believe that they need to do this themselves with a little assistance/guidance from us. Most are comfortable (ish) with Facebook and LinkedIn.

So for the past couple of weeks we’ve been hosting some hands-on training for the staff on Twitter. Very basic and we have had to break it down to a level that they are comfortable with before chucking the big stuff. So here is what we’ve learnt and thought we’d share with anyone else that haven’t taken the plunge but would like to.

1. Start with a personal account. This way if you do make mistakes – its your own and does not reflect on the company.
2. Don’t focus on large number of followers but more on followers that are relevant to you. If you are on LinkedIn – this will be easy (especially for business). LinkedIn has an application called Tweeps that lists all your contacts on Twitter (check out the connections tab) and makes it easy for you to follow those that you find interesting. Hopefully some of them will think you’re interesting too and follow you back.
3. Find a desktop client like Seesmic or Tweetdeck to monitor your Twitter feed (tweets made by people you follow) to listen and learn. Its easier than visiting the web site.
4. Share links to articles that you find interesting. Don’t over sell your company (or yourself) but find information related to your company and your job that give your followers an idea of who you are. That will do a better job for you.
5. Check your Twitter feed at least once a day (to start with) and then perhaps for a few mins several times a day. Focus on mentions (@you) and direct messages (DM). These are meant for you to respond to and the best is to do it ASAP but definitely within 12-24 hours.
6. Link your feeds with other social media sites – which means that if there are people on the other sites on Twitter – they will follow you too.
7. DO NOT click on links sent to you on @ or DM unless you know the person and even then – send a tweet to double check that they really sent it. There is a lot of spam out there and you don’t want to get caught in it.

These are quite basic steps but should be a good way to ease yourself into Twitter.